Oregon State University will help Iraqi universities build sustainable engineering programs

Ross William Hamilton/The OregonianGov. Ted Kulongoski: "The nation of Iraq can begin to train their own engineers in
sustainable growth and development."

Oregon and Oregon State University will help Iraq universities develop energy and water conservation, green construction and other sustainable engineering and design programs, Gov. Ted Kulongoski announced Monday on his way to Iraq.

The governor, who was to arrive in Iraq early this morning, announced that the state and OSU will be signing a memorandum of understanding with Iraq's minister of higher education and scientific research to help Iraq universities in a five-year agreement that will include faculty and student exchanges.

"The nation of Iraq can begin to train their own engineers in sustainable growth and development," Kulongoski said in a prepared statement. "And Oregon students and faculty get on-the-ground training, strengthening their base of knowledge, planning and implementation."

The partnership puts an international stamp on Oregon's brand as a center of alternative energy and environmental innovation. It also helps OSU carry out its land-grant mission, said President Ed Ray.

"We are supposed to help people get stuff done," he said. "We have not planned deeper than that in terms of what is in it for us. ... To do it in that part of the world where the suffering has been so incredible is something we feel good about."

The pact marks the first time a U.S. state or university has entered an agreement with the government of Iraq, university officials said. It also is unusual in that Iraq, not the United States, initiated the agreement, they said.

BenEd Ray, president of Oregon State University: "We are supposed to help people get stuff done."

Iraq, OSU, the state of Oregon, foundations and possibly the federal government will pay for the projects under the agreement, but details have yet to be worked, university officials said.

"It is fantastic; it is very needed," he said. Iraq's northern region "is really a beachhead for democracy," Atkinson said. "Women have a right to vote. They have their own police force."

OSU's School of Forestry, College of Agricultural Science and College of Engineering will be involved in helping Iraq universities develop curriculums and laboratories for studies in everything sustainable, said Catherine Mater, director of sustainability for the College of Engineering. She is in Iraq with the governor and Ron Adams, OSU's dean of engineering.

Iraq universities, for example, will be establishing engineering programs for using solar energy to light highways, water and energy conservation, and green design and construction, she said.

Iraqi professors will begin coming to Oregon, probably in February, to study OSU's sustainable engineering program and become familiar with the testing equipment the university uses in its labs, she said.

Iraqi students also will be coming to OSU, in fact three already are working toward their doctorate degrees there. The university this year has drawn 1,545 international students, a 39 percent increase from last year.

The OSU-Iraq partnership began more than a year ago with Mater's son, Joshua Mater, and a bombed out library at Thi Qar University south of Baghdad. A young engineering professor told Joshua Mater, then a captain with the U.S. Army's Special Forces, that the university had lost all of its engineering textbooks in the bombing.

Mater contacted his mother, and OSU engineering professors rounded up $30,000 worth of engineering textbooks for the Iraqi university. The Book Wish Foundation in New York City helped pay to get the books translated into Arabic.

"After that first exchange, we realized there may be an opportunity to expand this level of partnership between OSU and the university system in Iraq," Catherine Mater said.

The university then asked the governor to extend an invitation to Iraq's university engineering departments. In the summer of 2009, 19 Iraqi university engineering professors visited OSU to see its sustainable engineering program. Joshua Mater, now 30, also set up the Michael Scott Mater Foundation - named after his late father - which will raise money to support the OSU-Iraq agreement.

OSU and other state universities are involved in projects around the world, usually with other universities, said George Pernsteiner, chancellor of the Oregon University System. Earlier, this year, OSU signed a memorandum of understanding with Qatar to help that country with dry-land farming projects.

The focus of OSU's projects in Iraq will not be on politics, but on food, water, renewable energy and other basic issues, he said.

"The real story here, he said, "is we will work out solutions together to the kinds of challenges we are all going to face... We'll start small. The payoff ultimately will be big."